MEET DAYS'S RAVEN BOWENS

It’s been such a roller coaster,” reflects Raven Bowens of landing the job of DAYS’s Chanel. “I auditioned for it months back. It was a self-tape and I didn’t hear anything for weeks and so I had kind of given up on it. About a month or so later, I got a call for a chemistry read but I didn’t get the part. I was told it went down to the wire and it went another way and as actors, we hear that often [laughs]. I was like, ‘Whatever, they were just probably being nice’. So I was pretty sad about it and then all my team was hyping me and I thought, ‘You know what? I read Carol Burnett’s book a while back, and in her book she talked about how she couldn’t get arrested, she couldn’t get a job, and she kind of settled with herself and was like, “You know what? It wasn’t my turn. It was that other person’s turn.” ’ So I sent my agents that email and they said, ‘We love this, so moving on.’ A couple of weeks later, I booked THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, so I was in New York and I was doing that show and then DAYS called and they offered me the role. It was pretty crazy.”

Because it was a quick recast — Precious Way (ex Chanel) last aired on July 5 and Bowens picked up on July 6 — the newcomer hit the ground running. “They called on my birthday, which was crazy,” she recalls. “We closed the deal the day after. They sent me five scripts that day. I had to finish shooting MAISEL — I think I had two more days — and then I flew back to L.A. I had to change my hair, get everything together because it was a recast so they needed certain matchups and things like that. I literally hopped on a plane, was learning lines on the plane, had one day of being in L.A. before I started filming on DAYS. My first day, I think I did something like 29 scenes. It was wild. Wild. I had to go in doing everything that I’ll probably ever have to do. My first scenes, I come in bawling, so I was like, ‘Okay, well, that will get me really comfortable with everybody real quick.’ ”